


Monday

by Ferith12



Category: Dick Grayson - Fandom
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Sad Fluff, Slice of Life, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-07 10:48:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6800650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ferith12/pseuds/Ferith12
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A day in the life of Dick Grayson, age nine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monday

6:30 am, Wayne Manor.  
Nine-year-old Dick Grayson is the only one awake.  
The sun is just starting to think about rising as Dick climbs out of his second story window. He's done this a hundred times before in the six months he's been in Wayne Manor, and it only takes him about ten seconds to get to the roof.  
He sits up there, watching the sunrise. There aren't any sounds up here, except maybe the faint chirping from trees down below. It's very lonely, but a good kind of lonely. Like all there is is himself and the rosy, endless sky. Like everything belongs to him, or maybe like he belongs to it.  
He sits there, simply enjoying his existence, and for once he is completely still.

7:00 am, the kitchen at Wayne Manor.  
Alfred is awake by now, but he's off somewhere else in the house doing Alfred things, so Dick is free to climb up onto the counters and get himself a bowl of cereal.  
He thinks about leaving without writing a note for Bruce, but decides he isn't that irresponsible.  B'll freak out, and so will Alfred, in a very calm and composed way.  (Unless he already knows, you can never tell with Alfred.)  
He writes his note on a Post-it and sticks it on the coffee maker where he knows Bruce will see it when he wakes up.

 7:30 am, somewhere on the outskirts of Gotham.  
Dick does a handstand in an ancient apple tree that stands all alone on a hill that looks too green to be real.  
School at Gotham Academy starts at eight fifteen.  It takes about fifteen minutes to get there from Wayne Manor on the winding, genteel roads by car.  Running, jumping hedges cutting through private property, it takes about ten.  But if you want to have fun with it, if you explore the the gentle, rolling hills with their pockets of solitary mansions and breathtaking(ly expensive) gardens along the way, it takes about an hour.  
Dick doesn't care much about people's private property.  The rich of Gotham seem to have  _way_ too much of it, anyway.  And what they never saw couldn't hurt them.  Dick has turned running through elaborately cared for grounds and climbing on mansions without being seen into an art form.  
Once upon the time the world was Dick's playground.  Now Gotham is.  He misses traveling with a deep yearning.  Haley's would have been in Paris this time of year.  Paris is his favorite city.  But now Dick is learning, slowly, how to find the excitement of discovering new places, new worlds, even while confined to a single city.  
Dick doesn't know of many places so blatantly separated into rich and poor.  Most cities do, of course, have nice areas and less nice areas, but there's usually at least some transition.  Gotham has no transition.  Within the city proper all is decrepit and falling apart, everyone is poor, everything is dirty.  But on the outskirts it's completely different.  The landscape is all rolling hills and dotted with the manors of the disgustingly rich.  
The streets of Gotham belong to Robin, and they have taken Robin to be their own.  At night he dances over grimy rooftops, and swings from their crumbling gargoyles and decrepit fire escapes, unearthing their dirty secrets.  And once in a while, he finds a beautiful one.  
He's pretty sure that that Dick Grayson will never belong in the world of the upper class, but he has come to feel as though, maybe, he can learn to enjoy it.  This land of the super wealthy is foreign to him, but that is what makes it exciting.    
Dick does a quadruple summersault, jumping from the tree, and runs.  He has spent a bit more time there than he had intended, looking for apples (because he knew for a fact that the people who own it won't bother to pick them) and he there's a door in a hedge a little ways ahead that has a magical look to it.

8:20, Gotham Academy   
Dick is a whole five minutes late.  He rushes in to class, muttering quick apologies to his teacher, while the other children all jeer at him in a very civilized manner.  The rich of Gotham are almost all painfully civilized.  
Dick's teacher gives him a scornful glare for half a second and returns to the lesson like he doesn't exist.  Dick's teacher _hates_ him. With a passion.  Dick isn't sure if this is because she, like most people in Gotham is racist/classist/whatever-ist and he's a gypsy circus brat, or because he gets bored and  _just cannot sit still_ , or because he asks questions she can't answer, or because despite all that, he still manages to be top in his class of kids all two years older than him in everything except english.  It's probably a combination.   
Dick sighs and tries to concentrate on what she's saying, but instead ends up wondering how far he can tip his chair back before he falls backward.  Really far, it turns out. He never falls but his teacher glares at him again and he tilts upright.  He's  _trying_ to be good, honest.

12:00, Gotham Academy Cafeteria   
It doesn't take Dick long to spot his best friend, Barbara Gordon.  She's two years older than him and one grade ahead.  Her father is the police commisioner, so she's here for her safety.  She looks almost as out of place here as Dick does, and would get bullied almost as much, except that she's seriously scary when she's mad.  Dick may be Robin, but he's also a nine-year-old who looks way younger, the perfect target.  Even as Robin he's not really  _scary_ .  Awesome, but not scary.  And he has no way to defend himself without compromising his identity.  Besides, he doesn't hurt kids.  
Babs, though, has neither of these reservations.  She once punched Derek Thompson for picking on Dick, and gave him a black eye that lasted over a week.  
Dick sits at Barbara's table and they chat about mostly nothing until the bell rings.  

3:45,  Gotham Academy  
Bruce and Alfred come to pick Dick up from school.  Dick isn't sure why they both have to come, but they always do.  
Bruce is furious at Dick for going off to school on his own that morning.  He gives a long lecture about safety, and letting adults know where you are.  Personally, Dick thinks he pretty much won every safety argument for all time when he finally made Bruce give in and let him become Robin.  And Dick _had_ let Bruce know where he was.  
Alfred doesn't say anything, but his eyes twinkle just a little, so Dick knows he knew all along.

When they get home Dick suddenly jumps up onto Bruce and hugs him.  Bruce tenses up like he always does, like he doesn't know what a hug is, and Dick thinks it's kind of adorable.  
"Thanks," Dick says.  He's not quite sure why he says it, what he's thanking bruce for.  Thank you for taking me in?  Thank you for giving me a life as Robin?  Thank you for worrying? Maybe he just says "Thanks" because he's not quite ready yet to say, "I love you".  
This new world with Bruce and Alfred and Babs, with rich Gotham and poor Gotham, it's a strange one, but he's beginning to think it's his.  Haley's Circus will always be home, but they say home is where the heart is, and when your heart is broken, you can keep it in more than one place.


End file.
